Large, thick-stemmed, glabrous herbs with erect, unbranched stem (pseudostem) broadening towards rarely suckering base, stem formed by imbricated bases of petioles, dying after flowering
Leaves spirally arranged, simple, large, with thick midrib and numerous pinnately-parallel nerves extending to margin; petiole expanded, sheathing
Flowers mostly unisexual, irregular, aggregated into fans in axils of bracts, forming pendulous bunches; female or bisexual flowers within lower deciduous bracts and male flowers subtended by ± persistent upper bracts
Perianth segments 6 in 2 whorls, but outer 3 and inner 2 reduced to teeth or lobes of a tube split along 1 side, with the third inner one free
Stamens 5 or 6, perfect, the sixth sometimes rudimentary; filaments filiform; anthers linear, 2-thecous, thecae parallel and contiguous
Ovary inferior, 3-locular, each locule with many ovules on an axile placenta; style short; stigma 3-5-lobed
Fruit fleshy, indehiscent, inedible, 3-locular
Seeds subglobose with a thick hard black testa, with conspicuous hilum
x = 9 (polyploidy)
Nomenclature:
Ensete Horan.
Horaninov: 8, 40, t. 4 (1862)
Baker & Simmonds: 407 (1953)
Moore: 167 (1957)
Distribution & Notes:
Global: Species ± 25, subtropics of Africa to Asia and New Guinea
Southern Africa: Species 1: Ensete ventricosum (Welw.) Cheesman (= Musa davyae Stapf); forest glades of NE Mpumalanga
References:
BAKER, R.E.D. & SIMMONDS, N.W. 1953. The genus Ensete in Africa. Kew Bulletin 1953
HORANINOV, P.F. 1862. Prodromus monographiae Scitaminearum. Academia scientiarum, St. Petersburg
MOORE, H.E. 1957. Musa and Ensete: The cultivated Bananas. Baileya 5
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Welcome to Biodiversity Advisor 2.0!
Biodiversity Advisor, developed by the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) and its Data Partners, is a system that will provide integrated biodiversity information to a wide range of users who will have access to geospatial data, plant and animal species distribution data, ecosystem-level data, literature, images and metadata.
The integrated information comes from our much-loved Botanical Database of Southern Africa (BODATSA) also known as Plants of Southern Africa (POSA), Zoological Database of Southern Africa (ZODATSA), Biodiversity Geographic Information System (BGIS), SANBI's institutional repository (Opus) and others.
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